We spend at least half our lives dreaming. One third of our lives is spent sleeping and therefore dreaming at night. According to Harvard research , 48% of our days are spent daydreaming and recent studies show daydreaming is vital for higher levels of cognitive function. Therefore more than half of our lives are spent dreaming; think about it; the fantasies, dreamy moments, painting a future with a loved one, building our next business. These are all dreams. This is brain activity that occurs for each of us; every single day. Dreams are a daily emotion and activity. All around the world. We are experiencing and feeling these dreams.
Dreams are the windows to our creativity. The subconscious is our greatest therapist. In between sleep dreams and daydreams, we are empowered with tools for self-enlightenment, discovery, reflection and rest for the thinking mind.
However, and unfortunately these numbers are slowly declining. And they are declining because of our phones. Just think about yourself, when you are on the bus or train, or standing in line in the grocery store or even during a lecture. What do you do? What happened to looking outside of the window and daydreaming?
When we dance in a concert, we capture the moments more on our phones than reflect with our minds and connect to our hearts. Think about yourself for a moment. When was the last time you really let go of your phone and let yourself truly dream?
Why aren’t we working on maximising this huge source of enlightenment?
I question, In a world where creativity can take us the furthest and make us the greatest innovators, why we aren’t utilizing our dreams more?
Our world today thanks to dreams…
120 years ago there was a young man called Albert. He dreamt he was high, high up in the mountains and sledding down as he watched the stars all around him. 50 years before him there was a man called Elias, also his mid 20s. He had a dream that he was taken prisoner to a place far, far away and feared for his life as he watched savages all around him with spears. And then more recently we have Larry, our third protagonist, also in his mid 20s, in the middle of the night dreamt of a never ending stream of stories and the links between them. It might surprise you but these three dreams and these three dreamers impacted our world, shaped our reality and changed our day to day lives.
Albert was sledding so fast that he eventually approached the speed of light. At this moment, the stars in his dream changed their appearance and size in relation to him. I assume you have figured out which Albert I am talking about? He woke up and meditated on this idea. Albert Einstein started to formulate what became one of the greatest scientific theories of all time; the theory of relativity
Then there is Elias with that crazy dream and the spears. He watched the savages pierce their spears; in and out… but not into his flesh and rather into his clothes. This was the eureka moment for Elias Howe; to place a hole in the tip of the needle inside one of the greatest inventions of all time; the sewing machine.
And then we have Larry and his vision, he had managed to download the entire web and information and find links between them. That night he wrote down the basis for an algorithm that was initially called Page Ranks which was then renamed to Google. Larry Page is a big advocate of having paper and pen by your bed because you never know what you might dream of.
My Dreams
I have always had a deep, bright and dark imagination. As a child, I created imaginative stories with my imaginary friends. As an older child and teenager, I created darker stories and even paranoid screenplays in my own life. Almost on a daily basis.
Yet, the core trigger to log my dreams was in 2010. I became interested in the subconscious after months of self-loathing and envy. I found myself on Facebook everyday, endlessly scrolling the newsfeed and watching the lives of others, and often desiring the lives of others. On the side, I was writing poetry, ideas for screenplays, a short book, yet all my creativity, and the time I was dedicating to creation was disappearing into the folds of social media.
Our greatest asset is our imagination and our ability to create. In that moment, I realised how important our subconscious is and started to log both my sleep dreams and daydreams. I also made an effort to open more windows to creativity time and less time to explorative voyeurism.
My Therapy through REM dreams
I became a data scientist with my REM dreams and discovered trends from months of dream logging. When I started my company Dreame, I had 4 dreams about 16 year old boys and 6 dreams about where I lived until I was 16. I only noticed the correlation from the data analysis and realised that I had very quickly transitioned from girl to adult in entrepreneurship mode. I decided to dedicate one activity per week for girl time and to feel young again. I stopped dreaming about younger boys and of myself as 16 and where I grew up.
Creating a platform to combine dreams and art:
If we dream more, we can create more.
We become more connected to ourselves and therefore more emotionally intelligent with others. We become more passionate because we have bigger dreams. We reflect on our thoughts and they all become clearer. We give more space for our thoughts and less to information. Einstein did say “imagination is more important than knowledge”. Would you say you spend more of your day acquiring knowledge or imagining?
As Artificial intelligence becomes more prominent, creativity becomes an increasingly powerful tool. Our dreams and imaginations are our greatest assets and we need to leverage them more.
Turning many of my dreams, ideas, fantasies, memories and dreamy moments into art has enabled me to feel like a creator and empowered my surroundings with colour and imagination.
I initially created dreame.me to turn REM dreams into art. There have been a range of entries; from erotic to scary, weird, surreal, political and sad. My genuine philosophy when it comes to dreams is that no dream is better, worse, or crazier than another. That is not to say that some have been a little more shocking for some of our artists than others, but they have enjoyed illustrating every dream and I have enjoyed to read each of them; particularly once the dream has been turned into art.
Each dreamer has passion, excitement or intrigue when they share their dream according to the artists. The reason for this is because our subconscious is less familiar, it can surprise us and each dream is one within itself, not better or worse than another; leaving no room for hierarchy and full freedom to explore with no inhibition.
Today Dreame is a platform to commission art and turn anything into a customised artwork. From memories to visions to bucket lists to ideas. On Dreame, you can choose to sell your commissioned art in our ever-growing gallery of co-created art. It is a new genre of art and the dreamers and artists make money from their co-creation.
Life may seem disorganized sometimes. It may seem overly hectic. Your bed might not solve all your issues, but if you give yourself room to listen to your subconscious, you may find both your life and your dreams enlightened.
I dream for us all to have many dreams of many kinds; dreams for the future, fantastical desires that we fulfill, grand visions, powerful sleep induced ideas and creative thoughts. You just never know when a group of savages in your subconscious might simply change your world and ours.
Tips for REM dream remembering:
1. Create a sanctuary
2. Record your dreams or write them down when you wake up in the morning. Do this before anything else. Write down words and avoid writing full sentences.
3. Before going to sleep, think about your dreams, be curious if you will remember your dream the next morning. The curiosity feeds the recollection.
4. Think about your dreams individually and also the correlating themes between them.
Tips for daydream moments:
1. Listen to music and look outside the window
2. In a concert or holidays, don’t take photos constantly. Let your mind drift off in some moments.
Tips for dream setting & manifestation:
Enter up to 10 dreams you would like to accomplish over the next year. Be as realistic as possible. Realism Dreamism. Think of a word you want to say more, a word you want to say less, a place you want to travel to, a person you would like to spend more time with, a physical or spiritual activity you want to accomplish. Send it to one of Dreame’s artists on our special site and achieve your dreamlist, dream by dream: https://goals.dreame.me/
Thank you for dreaming with me.
Sincerely Imagined,
Sharonna Karni Cohen
Co-Creator at dreame.me
